Travel insights and tips on some of the top attractions and best cities in the world

Who says you have to go to an amusement park to have a heart-pounding experience? If you’re visiting a brand new city and taking in all of the sites each has to offer, there are plenty of opportunities to go full-throttle with amusement park-like attractions without ever having to set foot inside a park.

When my kids were growing up, a favorite holiday tradition on Thanksgiving Eve was a nighttime stroll along Central Park West around the American Museum of Natural History to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade balloons come to life. Laid out flat along the closed streets on either side of the museum in the afternoon, the deflated balloons would slowly grow as crews worked into the night, pumping them with helium and covering them with sandbagged nets to keep them from floating away.

Every town and city holds their share of unsavory secrets and horror stories. Passed on from person to person like an unreliable game of “Telephone,” the good ghost stories only get better with time.

The Rainbow Room is shining brightly once again, high above New York City on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The legendary restaurant and dance hall is back with the same spirit, style and sophistication. The dazzling crystal chandelier and revolving dance floor are still the centerpieces of the room, just as they were in the 1930s and beyond.

Houston, Texas, is an exciting mix of old and new where history meets innovation. The most heavily populated city in Texas and fourth-largest U.S. city in terms of residents, Houston started as a humble railroad hub in the 1860s. Today, it’s home to oil fields, NASA, a thriving finance industry, and a flourishing arts scene.

Confirming what many art aficionados and museum-goers already knew, TripAdvisor just gave the Art Institute of Chicago the number one spot in its Travelers’ Choice Awards, ranking it not just the top museum in Chicago, but the top museum in the world for 2016.